Rossi : Of course, when [Pons and Fleischmann] made that presentation, they shocked everybody, and I have been positively shocked from an event like that. It appeared to be very simple, what they did, so I tried to reproduce the effect, and from then, I got extremely interested in that research. Of course, I have not been able to reproduce the effect that they obtained in 1989, but I tried so -- At that point, the spark had started the fire, and from then I continued my research.

Krivit : You attempted some experiments back in 1989?

Rossi: Yes.

Krivit : What kind?

Rossi : The same. I just tried to reproduce the publication. I read the patent application that they made because it had been published in 1990, or I read their report about the famous electrolysis, et cetera, et cetera. I tried. I have not been able to do anything anyway with that, but from that point, I started the research that started the idea that perhaps that it could have been possible to obtain low-energy nuclear reactions.

[Comment by Krivit: Every LENR researcher I've asked this question for the last 10 years has always responded specifically and precisely. For example, they will say, "It was a heavy-water electrolytic experiment." Or it was a "nickel-hydrogen gas" experiment. Or a "glow discharge" experiment. Nobody has ever told me, "The same." Every LENR researcher I have met has remembered his or her first experiment clearly. This suggests that Rossi's claim to have worked on LENR experiments in 1989 was a lie.]

Krivit: In that early phase of your experiments, when did you give up attempting to replicate Pons and Fleischmann?

Rossi: After some months. It was very easy. That was an experiment that was very easy to reproduce.

Krivit: Did you try to do it as soon as they made the announcement?

Rossi: Practically, yes. The time to buy, to find platinum, palladium and deuterium I bought from --

Krivit : So would you say you tried for a few weeks, a few months?

Rossi: A few months, trying to change all the possible parameters to heat up the D2O, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

[Comment by Krivit: There are some serious factual inconsistencies above: 1. The Pons-Fleischmann patent applications were filed in March 1989. Rossi could not have read the patent applications until 18 months later. 2. Nobody, even the people who were able to replicate Pons-Fleischmann, thought that the Pons-Fleischmann experiment "was very easy to reproduce." 3. Rossi contradicted himself. If he had "not been able to reproduce" Pons-Fleischmann, then it could not have been for him an "experiment that was very easy to reproduce." 4. Rossi had "not been able to reproduce" Pons-Fleischmann. Yet inexplicably it was, for him, "the spark had started the fire," and he allegedly continued his research. These inconsistencies suggest that Rossi's claim to have worked on LENR experiments in the early 1990s was a lie.

Krivit: When did you restart your interest in LENR? When did you first learn about this new type of research?

Rossi: When I decided that it was useless to go ahead with electrolysis, I came up with the idea to use other physical parameters, and the very critical parameter with which I have worked and which is the key factor of the reactor that you have seen yesterday is pressure. I cannot go into detail because, until the patent is granted, I cannot give information about how the reactor works.

[Comment by Krivit: Rossi's response, "other physical parameters," was wrong; electrolysis is a method, not a parameter. First, if he gave up on electrolysis, the correct response would have been that he began gas-loading experiments. Second, if he gave up on Pons-Fleischmann-type palladium-deuterium experiments, the correct response would have been that he began nickel-hydrogen experiments. Third, Rossi contradicted himself about a crucial matter: He suggested that "the very critical parameter" is pressure. But this conflicted with almost everything else he said publicly, that the most critical aspect was the "secret catalyst." In my video interview of him, he did not mention the "secret catalyst" once. His vague and inconsistent responses suggest that Rossi's alleged history of earlier LENR research was a lie.]

Krivit : When was this?

Rossi: Around 1992, 1993. I started using experiments with a particular system to use the pressure. I cannot give particulars. This has been the key factor.

Krivit: When did you start working with professor Focardi?

Rossi: In 2007, when I got results that I needed. Then I worked alone, and at a certain point, I was confident of the fact that I had reached an important result. At that point, I needed two things. Until then, I did not talk with anybody about the ork I was doing.

Krivit: There must have been some point at which you saw something that you said, 'Wow! This is strange.' Do you remember that moment?

Rossi : Yes, because I burned a finger.

Krivit : Can you tell me more about that moment?

Rossi: Yes, uhh, because, umm, I was, uh, uh, working with a, with a small reactor which was made of, uh, umm, of copper, was made of copper, uh, and with a small lead shielding, and I was giving energy with a resistance, uh, giving, eh, some sort of temperature. At a certain point, the, the temperature raised very suddenly, and, uh, and I had in my, the, the, uh, left finger of, uh, of, uh, the, the, the, the finger of, umm, uh, the index of my left hand, umm, sit on a, a part of this small reactor which was as big as this, and I burned the top of the finger. That has been the moment when I had the first, let me say, strange result. It was 1997, and I was in the United States.

[Comment by Krivit: There have been dozens of minor discoveries through the history of "cold fusion." Every single researcher I have interviewed remembers every moment of discovery with lucidity and precision. These are never moments they forget or have difficulty in remembering. The question about "moment of discovery" is one of the most fundamental questions any science journalist can ask. Rossi's explanation should have been simple and easy to explain. It should have rolled off his tongue with ease. I believe that I was the first journalist who asked him this question and that, had another journalist done so before me, Rossi would have had a better answer for me.

Beyond the obvious stammering, there is a serious problem with his response: It says nothing about what he did or what happened; there is no discovery, only a "burnt finger." Additionally, there is a contradiction: Rossi said that he discovered the "key factor" of "pressure" in 1992 or 1993. Yet he also said his "moment of discovery" was in 1997. And last but not least, throughout most of 2011, he told everyone that the key to his discovery is the "secret catalyst." Rossi discovered nothing.

Rossi : I met him. It was July 2007. I gave him my papers with an explanation of what I did.

Krivit : Which papers?

Rossi: Not public papers, just data sheets that I had collected in my experiments. I never made any publication, but I had my papers where I collected all the results of the experiments. I explained to him the basic principle of my reactor, the principle regarding the pressure.

Krivit: And his response?

Rossi : He said, 'I am curious about this. I want to go through this, and I will let you know.’

Krivit : And this instrument that Galantini used to measure the humidity? It looks at the steam that's coming out, and it measures --

Rossi : It measures -- I do not know how it works, honestly. It is a probe made exactly to measure the steam, the water residual in the steam. There have been some polemics about the fact that for somebody the probe was not fit for the temperatures, but the probe is fit for the steam.

Krivit : Francesco Celani has criticized your configuration from a conceptual point of view, about the calorimetry. He says your method of measuring only the output temperature is not reliable, and it’s a more reliable configuration to run between 80 degrees and 90 degrees by running a higher flux of cooling water. Do you accept this as a valid critique?

Rossi : No, this is nonsense.

Krivit : Why?

Rossi : Because the calorimetry that we are using has been considered fit from University of Stockholm professor Hanno, the University of Uppsala, professor Kullander, the University of Bologna, so I think that we use a system of calorimetry which is universally accepted.

Rossi: The calorimetry we use is the classic standard system that is used to evaluate boilers and any kind of a heating system.

[Comment by Krivit: At this time, Rossi had not used any calorimetry to measure the output. He had temperature sensors on the inlet water and the outlet chamber. However, he calculated his energy output not on the temperature on the outlet chamber but on several assumptions about vaporization of water to steam. The Swedish professors were mistaken.

Krivit: Do you have any graphs or pictures you can show me of the curve when it’s only electrical heating and no nuclear heating?

Rossi: When it is flat is when we go with the LENR.

Krivit: Have you ever attempted a control experiment?

Rossi : What do you mean?

(Krivit explains the concept of a scientific control.)

Rossi: I understand. Yes, of course we made it.

Krivit: What do you use for a control?

Rossi: Many metals. We have used iron, we have used copper, we have used all the metals close to nickel in the Mendelev periodic table. And I have used platinum, palladium, the classic, of course, because they are in the same family as nickel.

Krivit: And do they work?

Rossi: No, for a lot of reasons, also because the bigger the atom, the bigger are the Coulombic forces.

Krivit: Is nickel the only thing that works? Is nickel the only metal?

Rossi: To answer this question, I would have to explain to you the role and the nature of catalyzers, and this is an issue that I still am conservative with. I am sorry.

Krivit: You wrote to me in January in an email, in reference to your 2010 paper, "What I claim is a weak nuclear reaction." Your paper was titled fusion. Did your point of view change?

Rossi: No, my point of view did not change. You can call it weak. You can call it low-energy.

Krivit: You called your paper nuclear fusion.

Rossi : Yes, because you have nuclear fusions, but when you say low-energy nuclear fusions, they are nuclear fusions.

Rossi Responds to Questions About His Remarks About U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense Rossi Interview Part 3 (7:20)

Krivit: Your paper says tests were made in your lab with the assistance of the DoE and of the DoD. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Rossi: No, because I am under a confidentiality agreement. We worked with them. We are still working with them, but I am under a confidentiality agreement. I cannot absolutely talk about that. I am sorry.

Krivit: Can you say if there was any kind of contract, any federal contract?

Krivit: Do you give Francesco Piantelli any credit for some of the ideas that have formed the foundation of the science for nickel hydrogen research?

Rossi: Honestly, the work that he made is totally different from the work I am making. If there is somebody that gave me an idea that I developed, this somebody is Fleischmann and Pons because this has been their original idea. Piantelli has worked with nickel and hydrogen but in a completely wrong way, under my point of view.

I am sorry. I never talk about the work of my competitors publicly. Piantelli is a competitor of mine, so my deontology forbids me to talk about the work of my competitors.

Krivit: My question was, 'How is your work so different from Piantelli's?'

Rossi: He is not part of the team. Professor Levi is not on our team. Professor Levi is a professor at the University of Bologna.

[Comment by Krivit: Levi was a member of Rossi's "board," organized Rossi's Jan. 14, 2011, demonstration and press conference, wrote the press release, wrote a technical report for Rossi, conducted a sub-boiling experiment on Rossi's device, reported those results to Ny Teknik on behalf of Rossi, was present at five public demonstrations of Rossi's device and drew the schematic for Rossi.

Rossi: This is the nickel after three months of operation. We have found slight differences in the isotopic composition.

Krivit: Did you say you had anomalies in the isotopes from nickel-58 through nickel-64?

Rossi: No, mainly 62 and 64.

Rossi: We learned that the atoms which worked are the 62 and 64. Therefore, we studied and found a system to enrich the nickel, to enrich it of 62 and 64, because we noticed that they are the ones that can make transmutation.

Rossi: As you saw yesterday, the E-cats that we produce now have an excess which is six times, an output which is six times the input.

Krivit: The numbers on here, this is 200 times. The average here is 200 times -

Rossi: Yes, but we cannot work on a product for the public that way.

Krivit: I was able to look at the data from three reports that had a clear collection of data: the two from Mats Lewan and the one from Essen and Kullander. It looks like they show a ratio of 10 times.

Rossi: Yes. Consider that we guarantee to our customers six times.

Krivit: The reactor that you plan to sell, what ratio -

Rossi: Six. With an enormous margin of safety.

Krivit: So you are expecting to have a ratio of six times output to input?

Rossi: Because I owe a lot to the United States of America for personal reasons. First of all, the idea about my first factor, which is pressure, came to me in the United States of America when I studied a paper at the University of New Hampshire, where I was working on the Seebeck effect in the [early] 1990s, and I love this country. I reside in the United States of America. I really would be very happy to give my contribution to make jobs and technology and something useful to this great country.

Krivit: You do realize that people from Italy are going to watch this video?

Rossi: It is not a big issue. This is what I think. This is what I like to say. This was one question, and I think we are all set at this point.

Krivit: You're Italian friends, they won't -

Rossi : No, I esteem them. In Italy, we are investing in the research because we will give a half-million to the University of Bologna for R&D, but the manufacturing and the development of the technology will be made in the United States of America. We already are making this in the United States of America. The 1-megawatt plant is in production in the USA.

Rossi: He is professor Bianchini of the University of Bologna. He is the specialist, the expert specialized in measuring the radiations. He is the scientist that we have hired as a consultant to measure the radiation out of our reactors.